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Portland Public Schools accuses teachers union of illegal strike

portland-union-buttons.jpg

Blue buttons urging support for the Portland Association of Teachers sit in the front desk of the union's main office. Portland Public Schools is accusing the union of attempting to go on strike illegally.
(Nicole Dungca/The Oregonian)

If teachers go on strike next week, will class size be one of the reasons?

The question matters because state law lists issues that unions and employers are allowed to bargain over. Employees can strike over only some of those issues.

In a Feb. 10 complaint filed with the Employment Relations Board, the district’s legal counsel argues one of union’s justifications for a strike is class size, which is not on the list of issues that are grounds for a legal strike.

The complaint asks the state to cancel the strike, order the union to eliminate class size from the proposal, or return to bargaining for at least 30 days before going on strike.

A hearing on the complaint will be held on Feb. 19, the day before the start of the strike. The board is not obligated to issue a ruling until Feb. 26.

The complaint appears designed to combat the union’s public messages.

Union leaders have made class size a rallying cry. As the teachers union blasted the district’s call for impasse in November, Grant High teacher Bill Wilson said Portland teachers wanted to “find solutions to our class size crisis and the growing inequity in our neighborhood schools.”

In the union’s "bargaining brief" to members on Jan. 16, leaders presented a new proposal featuring "real workload/class size relief."

"The status quo is unacceptable to teachers, students and parents. It's not enough for the Board to just maintain current workload and class size levels," the message reads.

But when teachers filed the required notice of their intent to strike to the state, "class size" does not appear on the list of reasons. "Employee workload," which typically has been interpreted to mean the number of students assigned to a teacher, does.

John Bishop, the attorney for the Portland Association of Teachers, refuted the complaint, saying the teachers are walking out legally. The teachers union is not walking out over class size limits, even if it is talking publicly about class sizes being too big, he said.

"The teachers are absolutely interested in addressing excessive class sizes," Bishop said. "They cannot, at the bargaining table, insist on a particular class size, and they are not insisting on a particular class size."

Henry Drummonds, a professor at Lewis and Clark's law school, said such a complaint isn't surprising.

"It's pretty standard operating procedure to challenge the legality of a strike," he said.

Drummonds said even if teachers can’t strike over class sizes, they can walk out over the impacts of class sizes. For example, the union had a proposal on the table in November asking district officials to pay teachers more money for class sizes that go over a certain level.

Disagreement over pay is a legitimate basis for a strike under state law.

"Employee workload" is one of the issues the teachers union named to justify a walkout in its required notice to the state. Other issues include salary and fringe benefits; the length of the school year; hours of instructional and preparation time; disciplinary procedures; performance pay; and duration of the contract.